Document processing facilities are a vital part of any major enterprise for ensuring effective mail based communication between the enterprise and its external and internal constituencies. Typically, document processing facilities employ a multitude of operational processes, people and/or machine resources and systems for processing the often massive quantities of letters, packages, envelopes, coupon booklets, brochures, post cards, and other items of mail intended for external distribution via a mail distribution network (e.g., the United States Postal Service (USPS)) or internal distribution within the enterprise. The types of processes performed respective to a mail article will vary depending on the mail article type, the function of the mail article and the capabilities and requirements of the machine resource or system engaged in that article's processing.
Types of machine resources found within a typical document processing facility may vary from one facility to the next, but may generally include sorters for sorting mail articles according to a sort scheme into one or more mail bins, inserters for manufacturing mail articles and preparing them for distribution, cutters, printers and folders for generating, assembling, arranging and organizing mail articles, mail bins for accumulating the multitude of mail articles processed in preparation for distribution, postage meters for applying postage to mail articles according to their particular weight class/mail category, etc. In addition, a multitude of computing resources may be interconnected with the various machines within the facility to ensure proper operation and connectivity of the devices (e.g., connectivity to an application server capable of executing software associated with the device) as well as to track articles during processing. Furthermore, each of these devices or computing resources may be supported and/or used by one or more device operators/users who execute tasks in connection with one or more customers, projects or procedures. Suffice to say, a plurality of machine resources, people, and processes must be effectively coordinated to ensure optimal operation of the document processing environment in the production of mail items intended for delivery via a mail delivery network, such as that maintained by the United States Postal Authority (USPS).
In the case of the USPS, a mail item may flow through a plurality of destination entries positioned throughout the United States before ever reaching the addressee (Mail Target). The various destination entries of the USPS network may include Bulk Mail Centers (BMCs), Sectional Center Facilities (SCFs), Destination Delivery Units (DDUs) and Destination Area Distribution Centers (DADCs). Each destination entry may process the mail item in different ways using different equipment as it flows through the network, including validating it for compliance with postal authority design regulations, imaging it for delivery point verification, printing upon it, sequencing it for final delivery, scanning it to enable a general means of tracking by the mailer or mail owner, etc. The extent to which the above described processes are performed depends on the mail type to be processed (e.g., first class, flats), the distance between the location of initial induction into the delivery network's mail stream and the final delivery point of the target and the processing capabilities of respective destination entries within the postal network.
It is not uncommon for a mail owner, such as an enterprise desiring to deliver a plurality of mail articles to one or more mail targets, to outsource the mail preparation, coordination and processing tasks required to ensure delivery of mail items to the targets via a mail delivery network. For example, a mail owner may prepare mail items in-house accordingly, complete with inserts, return envelopes, properly applied postage and address data, etc. using one or more inserter devices. Once complete, however, the mail owner may then submit the enveloped mail items to a mail processing service provider (e.g., Pre-sort Bureau) to be further arranged, sorted and prepared for submission to a postal authority (e.g., United States Postal Service) by one or more sort processing devices. Activities performed by the mail processing service provider may include printing onto the mail items a postal authority barcode such as an Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) or other barcode, co-mingling the mail owner's submitted mail items with the mail of other mail owner's in order to attain greater mail volume and/or achieve higher ZIP Code based work sharing discounts, performing various address or delivery point correction and verification services using specialized and approved software, etc.
To maintain a degree of control and point of accountability for the integrity of the mail items submitted to the mail delivery network, the IMB applied to each mail item may have encoded therein an identifier associated with the customer (e.g., 6 or 9 digit Mailer Identifier). In such instances, the barcode is usually printed onto the mail item by the mail owner and made visible within the address block window of the item. However, the mail processing service provider will typically prepare and print onto the clear zone of the mail item an IMB that is specific to the mail processing service provider as opposed to the mail owner. This is done, in part to fulfill the traceability requirements of the postal authority—i.e., enabling the postal authority to account for the actual owner and/or submitter of the mail item. Moreover, this practice is typically preferred by the mail processing service provider so that they may better account for the mail items they place into the mail delivery network for processing and eventual delivery to the mail owner's intended targets.
Using the IMB as a tracking code enables the postal authority to convey event data related to each mail item as it progresses through various stages of processing within the mail delivery network. The event data may then be accessed for retrieval and query based on specific search criteria. Mail stream event data may indicate, amongst other things, the identity of the mail item by reference to its printed IMB, timestamp and location data for the mail item through the postal authority network, processing occurrence data, etc. Hence, both the mail service provider and mail owner may track the mail items, but only to the extent they have information (search variables) by which to query the postal authority tracking database—i.e., IMB tracking code associated with the 100 mail item, designated ZIP Code, mailing date, etc. If the mail owner does not have knowledge of the IMB tracking code assigned to the mail item by the mail processing service provider, or detail regarding the date of submission of the mail items to the postal authority, the traceability of their mail items is compromised. There currently exists no means to ensure that a mail owner can readily track a mail item intended for a specific target once they have relinquished mail processing control of the item to a mail processing service provider.